Absolutely Like God • Luke 6:27-36

53:50 Teaching begins

Notes

What kind of person follows Jesus? People have this idea that you’re trying really hard to be nice.

Nice is like Magnolia colour room paint. Polite, mellow, bland, chill, harmless, you don’t even notice it.

If you follow Jesus you’re not trying to be a nice person. You’re becoming like Him. You live the life of God, you love your enemies, because God loves them. He has the power to love those who despise Him.

Christianity is radical, and it’s absolute.

Either you love absolutely, like God, or you’re a sinner.

I’m reading in Luke 6 from verse 27.

1. Jesus commands His disciples to love absolutely, like God.

A. We’re continuing Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, and He’s speaking to His disciples, and especially to His newly-chosen apostles. He’s connecting to them, drilling them with His eyes, speaking right to them. He is sifting them and making them know their hearts. Remember, a true disciple listens to Jesus and suffers for His sake.

B. The suffering begins right here: Love your enemies like God loves His enemies.

1. You’re going to have enemies: the ones who rebel outrageously against God, who is absolute love. They are absolutely wrong to hate God, but they do. They hated the prophets God sent to call them back into covenant relationship with Him. They will hate you because you are living for the Son of Man, the Messiah, whom they will hate and crucify.

2. Jesus says, love those people who hate you.

C. He shows how to love, not with tingles and in-love-ness, but practically.

1. Do good to them. If they’re hungry, feed them. If they’re thirsty, give them something to drink. Meet their needs.

2. If they curse you, speak well of them. If you can’t say anything good about them, say nothing. Never say anything bad back at them, don’t curse, bless them.

3. Pray for them, that God will do good for them, make their life satisfied, make them happy, make their lives better.

D. Why love people who hate you? Because God wants to reach people who hate Him and save them. He wants to reach them through you, to show it’s really Him. He loves the unlovable through you. It’s a miracle.

E. Notice that real love is generous.

1. If they take your coat, let them have your shirt.

2. If they hit you on the cheek let them hit you on the other side.

3. If they ask for something, give it to them. If they borrow something, don’t ask for it back. Just say in your mind, “I am losing you forever.”

2. Here’s how you love people: treat others the way you want them to treat you.

A. I’m an expert on that. I already know how I want to be treated. Suddenly I realise: I’m an expert on love.

1. I want people to be considerate towards me. Be aware of me and realise my needs are important. I want people to be aware of the consequences of their actions in my life.

2. I want people to treat me fairly. Tell me the truth every time, like what’s wrong with what you’re trying to sell me. Don’t rip me off. Be impartial, don’t favour your nephew over me when you’re filling a position. Don’t break the rules to favour you and have an unfair advantage over me.

3. Be kind to me. Be sympathetic, be helpful, be generous to me. Be forgiving when I make a mistake, it really was a mistake. Think the best of me.

4. I want people to treat me gently because I’m valuable. If you break me you lose the value.

B. Jesus says this is how you treat everybody.

1. You treat your friends with thoughtful consideration, you want the best for them. For the most part.

2. This is also how you treat people who hate you, curse you, hit you, take from you.

3. There is no difference. You treat everyone the same, with the love that God shows toward you.

3. All of Jesus’ disciples are thinking at this moment.

A. One is, that’s not easy. That’s impossible.

B. The next thing is, that’s costly, I can’t afford that. I’m going to lose big time.

C. The last thing is, I can’t do that. I can’t love people like that.

4. Even as you think those thoughts and have that attitude, you have declared to the world and to yourself that you are an absolute sinner.

A. If you only love people who love you, so what? Sinners understand that; that’s how they live. You’re not doing anything different from sinners.

B. If you only do good to people you like, you are as good as a sinner is good.

1. They make a distinction between who they like and who they don’t like. Because the ones they like reciprocate. They give and take mutually. They benefit each other. They look out for each other.

2. But when someone doesn’t reciprocate, doesn’t give and take mutually, then they say, this guy is treating me unfairly. I’ll retaliate with having nothing to do with him. He’s no benefit to me, he’s treating me badly.

3. So how you evaluate people is based only on if they are a benefit to you or not. You really think, are they useful to you?

C. That’s self-centredness: concerned solely with one's own desires, needs, or interests. Sinners are self-centred.

D. Being a true disciple of Jesus is way better than that. It’s living right towards people with the life and power of God.

5. God loves even sinners.

A. God is considerate of all people. He considers their needs to be important. He’s aware of the consequences of His actions on them. He is kind, generous, thoughtful. He gives people who hate Him and blaspheme Him existence, He gives health. He gives food, air, water, life, clothing. He considers all peoples’ needs to be important, He considers all people to be valuable beyond price. His love is eternal, which means, it never began. He has always loved you and all men with everlasting love.

B. This is impartial. You are no benefit to Him at all, in fact you are a drain on His resources. He gets no return from you. You just take and take and take and never acknowledge any of God’s goodness. But because He loves you it doesn’t change His attitude towards you.

C. It struck me how powerful God’s love is when I meditated in Psalm 95:8-11.

1. It says: “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall not enter into My rest.”

2. At the same time He loathed Israel, God considered their needs. He fed them manna every day. Their clothes didn’t wear out, not even their sandals, for forty years. He had rejected them as far as His purposes but He continued to give them all that they needed to survive in the wilderness. He did not like them, but He loved His enemies 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for forty years.

D. If God were like you, and He only loved those who were a benefit to Him you wouldn’t even exist. As soon as Adam sinned against Him he was no benefit to God at all. He was a sinner, dead in his sins and transgression. God would have said, “That’s hard,” and destroyed him.

E. But He treated Adam and Eve as though they were valuable beyond price. He was kind and generous, He considered their needs. He didn’t abandon them. Anything less than eternal death is discipline, not punishment.

F. Love everyone, you’re like God. Love only those who are a benefit to you, and you’re a sinner.

6. Jesus says you have a great reward when you love like God.

A. You have the approval of God that you are right. When He says to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” that’s your vindication to the universe that you lived rightly towards man and God.

B. Even as you live you are confirmed as a son of God Himself. You take after your Father who is in heaven. You are true.

C. The vindication and the acceptance comes from God, not men. It’s not when everyone says you’re right, it’s when God says you’re right. Your praise comes from Him.

7. So what?

A. There is no in-between point for a true disciple of Jesus. You realise that either you love absolutely like God and you are perfect or you are a sinner. Which are you? The correct answer is that you are a sinner.

B. But Jesus commands you, His true disciple, to love like God. That doesn’t seem fair. How do I love like God?

C. You exchange your life for the life of God.

1. The gospel is that Jesus died to pay the debt of sinners. He covers your sins and satisfies God’s wrath against your sin. God so loves you that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

2. You repent of being a sinner who only loves those who love you. That life died with Christ on the cross.

3. Now He shares His new life with you. That new life knows how to consider others and love them and not be worried about you. You are not on your own, you live and love by the life of Jesus in you.

D. You will notice is that you still think like a sinner.

1. You resent people taking advantage of you, treating you badly, not thinking of you, only thinking of themselves. People who don’t follow Jesus can be really hurtful. Christians can also be hurtful.

2. You might think, “Hey, I’m not getting any better. I’m getting more and more selfish. I thought I was getting better. Is my salvation broken?”

3. You must obviously change the way you think. You can’t be a Christian and not read the Bible. You can’t grow in the Holy Spirit unless you take in the word of God. Only the Bible can transform the way you think.

E. The Holy Spirit will show you more and more of your selfishness. You deal with it by confessing it as sin and trusting in Jesus to take away your sin.

1. As Jesus does that He gives you by His grace what you did not have before, love for that person. You apologise and make it right.

2. It should be no surprise to find out you still think like a sinner. You are still in the body until you go to be with Jesus. As a true disciple you humble yourself and repent for the rest of your life, over and over again.

3. A real sinner doesn’t admit they’re wrong and never repents.

G. If you’re a disciple of Jesus and you don’t love everybody it calls into question if Jesus really lives in you. He can do it. If you don’t want to you are a sinner and you need Jesus.

H. Even Christian missionaries and pastors justify not loving others, which is really hating people. They are broadcasting to the world, “I don’t know Jesus.” It is a shame and an embarrassment. Please don’t justify hating anyone. Have Jesus live in you, and love everybody through you.

Let’s pray.